A Week in South Africa: 12 Photographs From an Epic Road Trip
I’d been on the road for little more than sixty minutes when those first flutters of road trip excitement started to kick in. In that short time, my travel buddy, Shawn Ogulu, and I had zipped past rush-hour traffic slowly edging its way into the Cape Town CBD, caught a quick glimpse of Table Mountain, the harbor, and False Bay bathed in early morning sunlight, and had just rounded the summit of the epic Sir Lowry’s Pass. It wasn’t the panoramic views back over the Cape Flats that elicited the excitement, but rather the promise of what lay on the other side of the Hottentots Holland Mountains. Over the next five days, we’d be exploring the small backroads, popular towns, and undiscovered gems of the Cape Overberg region.
Cape Town is one of the best self-drive destinations in the world. There are several routes threading their way towards and over the surrounding mountains, and also north and east along the coast. It’s also the most common starting point for the famous Garden Route, which attracts thousands of road trippers each year. But this time, we’d be stopping well short of the Garden Route’s official starting point. We were heading off to explore one of the most often-overlooked regions of the Western Cape.